The Bedroom
by BeshterAngelus
Summary: There are many ways Dana Scully can envision spending a Saturday afternoon...cleaning her partners unused bedroom is not one of them.


The explanations on Mulder's new house set up is vague, and I'm sure others have a better explanation than I on why suddenly he has a bed, but I wanted to play anyway.

They aren't mine, because if they were, I'd treat these two a lot more nicely than Chris Carter does, gees-Beshter

Dana Scully observed a pair of joggers outside of Mulder's apartment window, envying them their ability to have free time enough to take a random run on a Saturday morning. Frankly, she would like to have gone for a run, or perhaps a walk, or hell, even a chance to sleep on a random and all to infrequent day off. There had been a time, in the very beginning of her partnership with Fox Mulder at the FBI when she had been given the chance to have what the rest of the world called "weekends." Of course, she had been warned both while a student at Quantico, and when she left teaching there to become a field agent, that in the FBI personal time was rare.

"It's a 24/7 type of job," one of her instructors had barked. "You can't just stop being a special agent just because you put your badge down and take your gun off."

She turned to stare at the mess of Mulder's apartment and wondered if her instructors had this on his mind when he growled out that statement all those years ago.

Mulder stood in the thick of it, tall and lanky, his dark brown hair covered in dust and bits of paper, his hooded green eyes studying the piles of junk on the floor as if he was intently scrutinizing a crime scene. His eyes brightened as they fell on a brightly colored cover from some ancient looking periodical. He swooped on it, pulling it free from the rest of the pile of old paperwork; newspapers, pornographic magazines, and God knew what else that collected in an area that Mulder loosely defined as his "bedroom".

"I didn't know I still had this," he flipped it around for her to see, a crumpled, yellowing color cover that proclaimed "Spiderman" on the front. She arched an eyebrow nearly to her russet red hair, but Mulder ignored her sardonic look as he flipped it back to glance at it with glee.

"It's a first edition I stole off my cousin years ago," he chuckled. "Blake didn't even know it was missing for years. By the time he did, his parents had sold their house, he was married and on his own, and I forgot I even had it."

Scully was no expert on comic books or collectibles, but she had brothers growing up, and her father never admitted he had boxes full of comic books in the garage that he would lug from one base to other as the Navy reassigned him. She knew how valuable that comic was. "Mulder, how did you get it, and better yet, how did it end up in a trash heap in your house?"

"It's not a trash heap," he looked up at her in insulted surprise. "I told you I stole it. My parents drug us off to my aunt and uncles one Christmas, and Blake pissed me off about…something." Mulder frowned, his normally photographic memory trying to recall the childhood slight from years ago. "I think he had given me a wedgy."

Scully at least had the presence of mind to not laugh, though she felt the corners of her mouth twitch. She had seen the worst of Mulder's temper in the years that they had been partners, and somehow it didn't surprise her he would take revenge on his cousin that way.

"I take it he was an older cousin," she moved from her perch at the window, and crossed to the pile, prodding some of it with the toe of her sneaker.

"Spoiled, rotten, a bully. He was pissed I tattled to his mother about the fact he was checking out the neighbors' girls in their room at night with the telescope he was supposed to use for school."

"I see voyeurism runs in the family," Scully muttered dryly as she picked up a magazine whose cover depicted a woman wearing nothing but thigh-high silvery boots, and a futuristic looking gun.

Mulder didn't look in the least bit ashamed. "That was a good issue, you know."

"Read it for the articles?"

" No, the short stories, they are fantastic," Mulder didn't miss a beat as he pointed to a small, bare patch on the floor. "You can toss it over there, that's the throwing out area."

Confused, Scully pointed to an ever-growing pile behind Mulder. "What's that?" She had assumed that this was what he was chucking out.

"That is the keeper pile," Mulder glanced over his shoulder.

"Oh no," Scully shook her head, the ponytail her red hair was in slapping against either ear as her head moved. "Mulder, you are supposed to be using your bedroom for, I don't know, a bed. The one that is supposed to be delivered to your house this afternoon."

"Yeah," he didn't seem to understand her. She rolled her blue eyes.

"How are they getting it in the door?"

"It's a water bed, they'll put it together in there." He waved at the room that was a sea of more papers, more boxes, and, she cringed to admit it, more porn."

"Men," she murmured, grabbing a black, plastic garbage bag from a box she had picked up on the way over. It had been sitting ignored on Mulder's couch, which was now filled with the attempted clean up from the bedroom. She shook out the bag, and began grabbing and stuffing. Mulder watched her in shock for several moments before he could even lodge a protest.

"Hey, some of that I want to…" he began, but Scully glared at him, and he stopped, closing his mouth firmly and watching her with mild irritation.

"You get me up on the first Saturday I've had off in months, thanks to our wonderful new boss," Scully viciously grabbed what looked like a moth-eaten sweater, thinking of AD Kersch and what she would like to do with his neck. "You convince me to come to your house to help you 'tidy up a bit' for your new furniture. I might add you purchased this furniture off of a man whose idea of interior decorating involves mood lightening and leopard skin wallpaper."

"Hey, my neighbor was moving, and he offered me his stuff," Mulder shrugged. "You have to admit, the place is sort of sad."

Scully stopped in her shoveling long enough to regard first the cluttered, well worn couch, with it's sag in the middle from the numerous times Mulder had slept on it, to his nearly barren kitchen with its collection of sticky cups, unwashed in who knows how long, to the only neat area in the entire apartment, Mulder's bathroom. That remained immaculate, which went against all the laws of male-dom that Scully knew, brothers and boyfriends included. Her gaze settled back on Mulder.

"It isn't sad, it's depressing," Scully finally amended, as Mulder grinned. "Honestly, Mulder, you've lived here…how long?"

He stopped in the unfolding of a similar plastic bag to do mental calculations. "I moved in after Diana and I broke up."

Another vicious thought crossed Scully's mind as she scowled and made a lunge for some well worn copies of _Sports Illustrated_ before tying off the now stuffed bag and reaching for another. "So you've lived here this entire time without even the basics of decent living."

"I live decent," he protested; ignoring the snort of derisive laughter from his partner. "I have cable television and internet access, in this day and age that is decent."

"Mostly for your ever growing collection of erotica," she pointed to a prime example.

"Hey, a guy has to have something to relax him."

"That's what they are calling it now at days."

Mulder only laughed. "Face it Scully, guys like me don't get around."

"But that's what I'm saying, Mulder," Scully had cleared the couch now, and with another bag headed for the doorway of the scary room. "It's sad that you choose to live like this." She waved her hands at the pile in his room, before trying to get him to meet her gaze. He studiously avoided it while he picked through his pile. "You're like one of those desert hermits they talk about in church, you're a veritable St. Anthony, you hide away in your burrow where you hide yourself from the world and practice mortification."

"Hey, I'm not into that, Scully," Mulder finally looked up at her in horror and amusement.

"I didn't mean…" she began.

"I know what you meant," he grinned. "Mortification, the willful denial to ones body of certain comforts in order that one might attain perfection or holiness."

"St. Fox of the Obsessive Cause," she tossed back, crossing her arms in front of her as she leaned against the doorjamb.

"St. Fox, has a nice ring to it," Scully threw up her hands as he laughed, turning her back on him to tackled the insanely huge pile of boxes and old clothing in his room. For an hour she sorted through piles of books, long ago unread, calling out to wherever Mulder was if he still wanted them, and wondering why he didn't purchase a bookshelf while he was at it. Then there was old running shoes, stacks of clippings from papers years out of date, and low and behold…

"Mulder," she finally called, staring in disbelief in front of her.

"Yeah," he called back, the rustling sound of a plastic bag preceding him.

"What is…. that." She pointed to the square of brightly colored, quilted nylon fabric in front of her.

"It's…a bed," Mulder stated as if he was explaining this to a three year old. Scully bristled, her blue eyes blazing; as she turned her petite frame to stare angrily up at Mulder's much taller, leaner one. He didn't flinch.

"You mean to tell me, that I've spent all this time today, feeling sorry for you and helping you because for the first time since I've known you, you have finally gotten something to sleep on that actually fit you," she slapped the shoulder that was still just above where her height stopped, "and you had one of these all along."

"I can't help whatever conclusions you came to," Mulder rubbed the shoulder she had just struck. "I never told you I didn't."

"You are always sleeping on the couch!" She fairly shrieked this.

"Well, now you see why," he stated simply, as she stared at him in open mouth shock. He moved away from her to begin moving boxes to show a mattress, sagging in the middle from the weight pressing on it for years, with stark, now yellowed sheets balled up in a tiny corner near the top of the bed.

"I almost forgot I had this thing," he murmured. "Think Goodwill will take it."

It took several minutes for the crimson she was seeing in her eyes to recede, before she could even answer the statement. When it did, she cleared her throat loudly. "Mulder, if you have a bed, why didn't you sleep in it?"

His only response was to shrug.

She glanced at the tag at the end; it was not a bad mattress, or a cheap one. It was a name brand one, reportedly one of the better ones, and much more healthy for the neck and spine, according to what the commercials said. Not that Mulder ever complained of a single crick or achy joint. She glanced up at him again, but he only grabbed the edge of the bed and flipped the mattress up to the box springs below. Dust flew up and sparkled in the air briefly, and Scully coughed.

"Mulder," she choked, "allergic to dust mites, is that it?" Not that she had known him to have an allergic reaction to anything in his life, and after the number of times she had treated him, she would know. He didn't answer her, and he didn't look like he was going to, until he bent down to grab the edge of the box spring as well.

"I was never comfortable in it," he said finally, rising up and flipping the bottom half of the bed to match its counterpart. "I haven't ever been."

"And a water bed is more comfortable," Scully always felt vaguely seasick on those things, a funny comment when one considered she was the daughter of a Navy man.

"Ehh, I figured the motion might put me to sleep," he sounded skeptical about that too.

"I still don't get it," Scully muttered, beginning to grab and shove once more, as Mulder tried to maneuver the bed out over the cluttered floor.

"You want some help," she offered, grabbing and end, and helping him guide it out of the narrow door and into his now increasingly more cluttered living room. They propped the box spring by the couch. Scully regarded it with a sour eye, before heading back into Mulder's bedroom.

"I didn't buy that bed," Mulder finally admitted, causing Scully to turn around and blink at him.

"Diana did," Mulder pointed to it, his other hand on his hip as he slouched. It was a normal posture for him, born out of his height in comparison to others. "She bought the bed when we first moved in together, and when we broke up, I got it. She didn't want it."

"I see," Scully felt her face flush slightly at the thought of Mulder and Diana Fowley sharing an apartment together, a life together, something that she and Mulder as partners strictly didn't do. "Still, it seems a bit silly to let it sit in here while you slept on the couch."

"I couldn't sleep," he said simply. He pointed towards the television. "The sound helped me sleep at night."

"Why didn't you move your TV to the bedroom?"

"What, and have to purchase a new one for the living room?"

"I see," male logic at its finest. "Well, I suppose I can see why you didn't want to sleep in here."

"Well, that and it was lonely," he admitted.

"Mmmm," she didn't want to dignify that with an answer.

"You don't like Diana much, do you," he asked simply, without condemnation. Still, something about what he said made Scully's defenses slam into place.

"Why should I like someone who stole the X-files from us, and then turns around to play you like a violin, Mulder."

"I didn't say you had to, Scully," he responded in a hurt reply. "And I didn't say you weren't right to do so."

Scully glanced around the room she was cleaning, a room that Mulder mostly likely hadn't stepped into in years. Something about it made her very, very sad. "I should call you St. Fox of the Obsessive Causes. You are St. Fox of the Perpetually Damned." Why were there tears in her eyes? She glanced at the dust motes still flying in the air. "The desert father of all those who wish to chase after their causes no matter the cost, while they are deceived, destroyed, and discarded, all for someone else's sick, fucking game."

She hadn't heard him enter, or noticed till he had his hands on her shoulders. He spun her around carefully to look at him.

"Should I refer to you as St. Dana of the Perpetually Loyal," he chuckled, but Scully didn't find it particularly funny. "Sorry, my parents were Protestant, I didn't have much in the way of saints in my religious training."

"I don't martyr myself," Scully whispered. "Why do you do it?"

"Perhaps I'm a bit tired of the whole martyr bit myself." He waved at the bed. "Perhaps its time I stopped beating myself up for all the wrongs of the world."

She blinked up at him, his face serious for a change. His green eyes looked down at her intently, "I can't stop the search, Scully…but maybe I can learn to not take everything for granted." He reached a hand for her shoulder and squeezed. "And that includes the help of a friend on a Saturday afternoon."

He moved past her to the mattress, where it still stood propped against the far wall, and began to shimmy it. Scully watched him briefly for a moment, allowing her eyes to clear from the sudden onslaught of tears. She sniffed, and carelessly, for her, wiped a hand across her nose, pulling it away to find dust and dirt.

"Well if you want to stop taking me for granted, can I use your shower," she asked, "Cause I don't even want me in my car looking like this."

"I will do one better, I'll order the take out."

"Always take out," she sighed in amusement. "Not pizza."

"Indian," he asked.

"Indians nice for a change."

She moved to grab the far end of the mattress, and help Mulder move that out as well. When it rested beside its companion in the living room, Scully flopped down beside the pair on the couch. It groaned as a loose spring somewhere deep within twanged, and she shifted uncomfortably to find a spot that didn't poke her somewhere in her petite frame.

"Mulder, I think the next purchase you should get is a couch."

"What's wrong with this one," Mulder asked from behind the mattresses.

"It's lumpy and it smells funny." She shot back.

"Smells funny, how does it smell funny."

"I don't know, considering you slept in it and ate on it for umpteen years." She wrinkled her nose.

"Scully, men don't need their house smelling like flowers and other girly things."

"That's so attractive, Mulder," her voice dripped with sarcasm.

He peeked his head from around the mattress. "Well you are a female, Scully, you don't have a problem sitting on it."

He ducked his head before he could be clocked by the flying video of dubious origin.

"I forget, Scully, you have a wicked aim."


End file.
